ABSTRACT
Gadamer uses the notion of prejudices as conditions of understanding both to explain why we must reject the search for an extra-linguistic reality and as a way to account for the unity of language. The notion is the central claim of his philosophical hermeneutics: ‘It is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute our being. … They are simply conditions whereby we experience something – whereby what we encounter says something to us’ (Gadamer, 1976a, p. 9). Under normal circumstances, this claim would evoke puzzlement, incredulity and/or resistance. We usually think of prejudices as beliefs or ideas that should be overcome or abandoned because they lack a rational foundation. It seems odd to link a term that connotes a lack of understanding with the very conditions by which we understand and evaluate. If we think of our conditions of understanding as the context in which understanding has its sense, trying to conceive of another context that understands these conditions as prejudices is a bewildering proposition.
